Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
Sean Carroll recently did a podcast interview of futurist John Danaher on the issue of increasing automation, and what it might mean for future society. Danaher sees automation taking away jobs, jobs that won't come back. In this common view, we're heading for a post work society, where the machines do everything, and we need … Continue reading Our coming automated utopia?
James Wilson has an article up at Aeon, looking at the trolley problem and other ethical and philosophical thought experiments. One of the things he discusses is the notion that many philosophers have, along with many fans of particular thought experiments, that they're sort of like a scientific experiment. It's not that unusual for someone … Continue reading The problem with philosophical thought experiments
From an evolutionary standpoint, why does pain exist? The first naive answer most people reach for is that pain exists to make us take action to prevent damage. If we touch a hot stove, pain makes us pull our hand back. But that's not right. When we touch a hot surface, nociceptors in our hand … Continue reading Pain is information, but what is information?
A question long argued in the philosophy of science is the demarcation problem. How to we distinguish science from non-science? Karl Popper famously proposed falsifiability as a criteria. To be science, a theory must make predictions that could turn out to be wrong. It must be falsifiable. Theories that are amorphous or flexible enough to … Continue reading The spectrum of science to fantasy
Or at least, that's the conclusion of a paper which models the population changes and other factors involved. New model to study hominin interactions in time-varying climate environment. Neanderthals experienced rapid population decline due to competitive exclusion. Interbreeding only minor contributor to Neanderthal extinction. Abrupt Climate Change not major cause for demise of Neanderthals. Of … Continue reading Maybe we wiped Neanderthals out after all
With quantum physics, we have a situation where a quantum object, such as a photon, electron, atom or similar scale entity, acts like a wave, spreading out in a superposition, until we look at it (by measuring it in some manner), then it behaves like a particle. This is known as the measurement problem. Now, … Continue reading The measurement problem, Copenhagen, pilot-wave, and many worlds
Joel Frohlich has an interesting article up at Aeon on the possibility of detecting consciousness. He begins with striking neurological case studies, such as the one of a woman born without a cerebellum, yet fully conscious, indicating that the cerebellum is not necessary for consciousness. He works his way to the sobering cases of consciousness … Continue reading Building a consciousness-detector
Occasionally Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal captures an important insight, in this case, people's attitudes toward the social sciences. My attitude toward the social sciences is that they are quite capable of being scientific. They're not always, but then even the "hard" sciences have their lapses. On the one hand, what social scientists are studying exists … Continue reading SMBC: Social Science
Recently, there was a debate on Twitter between neuroscientists Hakwan Lau and Victor Lamme, both of whose work I've highlighted here before. Lau is a proponent of higher order theories of consciousness, and Lamme of local recurrent processing theory. The debate began when Lau made a statement about panpsychism, the idea that everything is conscious … Continue reading The issues with biopsychism
A few weeks ago, I started having a problem with comments showing up on the blog. I consulted with WordPress support, and was informed that it was a bug with my old trusty Twenty Ten theme, which I was also informed is no longer supported. To fix the issue, I'd have to change to a … Continue reading Site issues, and a question for mobile users
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